04 April, 2016

C is for Colombo, Sri Lanka


The lake in our little hill-town, not precisely the view from home
Dad: Red, it’s 3 a.m. Time to get up.


Me: Mmmf. ‘kay.



In and out of the shower, dressed, quick bite, and on the road. As American Ex-patriates living in Sri Lanka, we had to renew our residency visas annually. Thing is, we lived up in the mountains. All the government agencies were in the capitol city of Colombo. It was a four-hour drive.


That square formation in the distance is called "Bible Rock".
Dad would collect everyone’s passports during our school vacations (we went to boarding school, so he could only renew our visas while we were home), take a day to drive down the mountain, spend hours in numerous offices, and drive home. Sometimes visiting our colleagues in the city, depending on time.


You can tell we're down in the plains because everyone is dressed for heat.
At some point in Junior High, I started going with him. Just a random daddy-daughter road-trip. There was this massive, non-air-conditioned tropical office, where we’d stand in a monster long line for one or two hours, relishing the moments we were in the pathway of whatever fans they had running, turn in the passports (and paperwork? I don’t recall), wait a while longer, and go back to the desk to collect the updated legal documents.
The [POUND-pound, POUND-pound, POUND-pound] of the employee slamming his rubber stamper into ink and then onto the page in the passport booklet is embedded in my mind.
Finally we’d leave, dripping with sweat. Then on to the next office. Presumably all the stops weren’t visa related, and we were just taking advantage of being in the city to get things done.

Their old logo

We always got ice-cream on the way out of the city. At this place called “Elephant House” which had nothing to do with elephants except the logo. That’s where I first saw a giant, two-inch cockroach crawling along the floor. In non-air-conditioned, open-air, tropical buildings, bugs could come and go at will. No big deal.


...It made the tiny cockroach I found cooked into my pancake at school seem inconsequential.

The ice-cream stop became a lifelong tradition with my dad. If we were ever out together by ourselves, there would be ice-cream. Period.


The beach at Colombo. No, not in the 60s. These were legitimate cars on the roads in the 80s. And tri-shaws.
Moral of the Story: The most mundane of experiences can be a lasting memory.

11 comments:

  1. What a gift to see this experience through someone's eyes. It's completely foreign, but I felt I was there. I grew up in a place where -32F was complained about, but not all that rare. No cockroaches. No crazy heat.

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    1. Thank you Jerimi. I'm trying to keep these posts story-like.

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  2. I am surprised they would stamp the passports without the owner of the passport being present. Nice story! Love the ice cream shop sign.

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    1. I think they did stamp them after we came back up to the counter. Perhaps they just had to do a security check before calling us up. Eventually our family was denied visas and had to move, but that's a whole different story.

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  3. Mundane to you, fascinating for us! Thank you for sharing that story, it's a little glimpse of a life in another corner of the world I never would have seen. I love those kinds of moments. One of the reasons the A to Z Challenge is so much fun!

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    1. Thank you! I'm trying to make these each individual stories for A-to-Z. Thanks for stopping by!

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  4. Nice post. Love the beach picture!

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    1. Thanks. We lived in the mountains, around 6,600 feet, so I didn't spend a lot of time on the beach. ...until I moved to Delaware (my D post).

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  5. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  6. Well, now I want to go. I want to ride an elephant through the Elephant House drive thru.

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  7. Ha! I wonder if they have one.

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I enjoy a good debate. Feel free to shake things up. Tell me I'm wrong. Ask me why I have such a weird opinion. ...or, just laugh and tell how this relates to you and your life.